Vidar

[b]Be warned:[/b] this game is heavy. It may be wrapped in the graphics of a JRPG from 1994, but [i]Vidar[/i] isn't a game from your childhood. There is no combat, but death is a core mechanic. The secluded town is prayed upon by "the Beast," a mysterious creature around which a shroud of vague lore has taken shape. At the dawn of each day of gameplay, the identity of its latest victim is revealed. The order in which the townsfolk are slain is entirely random. Therein lies the charm of [i]Vidar[/i]. The cast is comprised of two dozen townsfolk, each written with an often startling degree of depth. They have hopes and fears, friends and family, and business to which they must attend. But most impressively, they are consistently human in their reactions to your choices, successes, and failures. Very rarely do the NPCs offer throwaway lines appropriate for any occasion. Quite the opposite; the dialog is strongly driven by current affairs. Each death that is announced sends ripples through the tiny community. Family members are inconsolable, friends are beside themselves with grief. Quests that were issued by or depended upon the deceased become impossible to complete. In many cases, however, the death will also cause new quests to become available from the survivors. The randomized order of deaths paired with the realistic responses from villagers combine to make the town feel truly alive. On your first playthrough, you might see a parent lose a child and struggle to cope. The next, the child may lose the parent and be forced to live with one of the dwindling number of villagers who remain. In this way, [i]Vidar[/i] delivers where other games like [i]Heavy Rain[/i] fall short. It does not offer you the illusion of a forking story line only to reconcile divergent paths shortly thereafter. In [i]Vidar,[/i] consequences are permanent and impactful. In order to learn more about the Beast, the protagonist must venture into the caverns beneath the town each day. The caves are filled with classic puzzles to navigate, reminiscent of [i]Chip's Challenge[/i] or [i]Sokoban[/i] and ranging from trivial to genuinely challenging. Your time in the caves is limited--you are automatically returned to the village when night falls. This forces you to budget your time wisely. Quest objectives often require backtracking to complete and so must be weighed against making overall progress in your explorations. Like the order of villager deaths, which rooms are accessible and the puzzles in those rooms are randomly generated at the outset of the game. The combination of randomized deaths, rooms, puzzles, player decisions and failures make for a near-infinite number of possible game experiences. Some cutscenes and events require a mindbogglingly improbable combination of circumstances to occur. In each case, however, the thoughtful and comprehensive NPC dialog creates a deeply compelling experience. For better or worse, the game does not hold your hand. Villagers issuing quests are often ambiguous in their descriptions. You carry a quest log but the UI offers no reminders of your current objectives. You will lose an occasional day in the cave because you were not clear on a mission's prerequisites. The game's unforgiving nature can remind you of 90s JRPGs as much as its art can. [i]Vidar[/i] artfully captures the complex web of interpersonal dependencies present in any community. It is a dark exploration of the humanity of grief. As death follows death and despair sets in, the game inescapably parallels life. It's not about winning or losing, it's about doing what you can with the time you've got.

I love that this game exists. I supported the kickstarter all those many months ago based on the promise of an ever changing story. All I can say is 'wow' this is a promise that was delivered on. The way the characters have their own wants and needs and relationships, and how that changes based on each death is amazing. I really hope other developers take note, and step up their story game, becuase Vidar shows an example of what is actually possible. Plus the amount of death in this game would make Geourge RR Martin sad. Or proud. And the puzzles! The puzzles are fun, and the time limits make for an anxious feeling. And they are randomized each run to feel fresh. The dev puts a new spin on some of the classic puzzles harkening back to Chips Challenge. For me, I treated these as fun little games in between the story. Can you tell I like story? So buy this game! Support an amazing dev who is pushing randomized storytelling in games.

While Vidar started strong and the emergent narrative from random deaths definitely entertained me, a bug-riddled second half and abysmal ending killed off any goodwill I had towards this game. Avoid it until some bug fixes pop up.

This game is fantastic. I was a little hesitant getting into it - I'm not the biggest pixel-art fan, and modern 2D RPGs reminiscent of old Gameboy titles have usually been a miss for me - they rarely live up to the nostalgia. Plus I was a little worried about the fact that it was made with RPG Maker. However, this dev has proven yet again that any tool can be used to make a great game. Solid and nuanced random-gen puzzles, a plethora of characters, great dialogue, and a high-stakes tale are rapidly turning this into my newest addiction. There's are enough details and alternative outcomes that I foresee myself getting several playthroughs out of it, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. First time I've written this excited of a review in while. Definitely loving it.

I have a lot more time in the game than Steam shows due to playing early builds throughout its dev cycle. Vidar is not only a clever and impressive use of the RPG maker engine (he basically gutted it and rewrote it to fit his needs for the game), but also has a cleverly written narrative where every time you play, it changes. You can't help but become attached to the characters even when you know one will die every day. Solve tons of puzzles which also change each gameplay! Can you save the town from The Beast?

I did receive the game in alpha in a give away at a stream on twitch. Now it is in early access I actually just bought a copy for a friend, because this game is absolutely worth the money imo. It's a rpg unlike any other I have played before. Instead of fighting random battles you solve puzzles. The game is randomised at start every time you play and the story evolves differently on when npc's die. I really like the artwork, story and Music a lot and reccommend the game to anyone who likes puzzles and story!

I got this as soon as I could, and I'm glad I did! It has an amazing story and from the little gameplay I saw from other people was completely different than what my game was. This game is different on every playthrough as well which is awesome and gives it so much replay value. I was also streaming this game and the creator of the game actually found the stream and was there to see how I liked it and to provide help if needed. So not only is the game great so is the developer! If you are on the fence about it definitely give it a shot.

Do you like puzzles and puzzle games? I don't. The only thing I find more annoying than (nontrivial) puzzles in a video game is TIMED puzzles that heavily penalize you for failing. And this kind of mechanic constitutes over 3/4 of the playtime of Vidar. To give you an example, the solution to one floor I finally found after 2 hours of reloading is flipping colored levers in the following sequence: pink, yellow, red, yellow, blue, red, pink, blue & green, pink, yellow, red, yellow, blue. A mistake results in a 5 minute reload and walk back to the beginning (or, if you don't reload, the death of a character rapidly resulting in total game loss). But don't worry, this isn't a spoiler, because all puzzles are randomized for maximal masochistic pleasure. Not all the puzzles are this hard. Protip: in the earlier levels, you can take a screenshot, pause, and figure out the solution without the timer counting down. But later, this doesn't work because a puzzle can take multiple screens worth of space. At first, when the puzzles are pretty easy, the timed aspect does add to the suspense inherent in the premise. Later, it just gets very, very irritating. Fortunately, the novel premise, the music, the setting, the characters, and the retro Chrono Trigger-esque graphics almost make up for this colossal annoyance. Each playthrough is different because some quests only become available when certain characters are alive or dead (and the order of deaths is random), so there is theoretically a lot of replay value. IMO, the dev could make this game way, way better by allowing varying puzzle difficulties on world generation, so people who aren't very puzzle-inclined can see the wonderful story and character interaction without as much frustration. When a programmer, like me, thinks several times through a playthrough that "it would be easier to code a finite state machine to solve this puzzle for me than to actually solve it", the puzzle difficulty is probably not honed for maximal enjoyment. But for those weird individuals who like puzzles and RPGs, this is a must-play. For RPG fans, it's good, but take a Xanax for the frustration, you'll need it. PS: It is fairly buggy on Linux at least. Once-an-hour crashes do not help with the frustration inherent in this game. As I write this review, I've reached the final floor of the dungeon, and the game has crashed twice on me there. It kind of spoils the mood and makes me question whether I want to bother finishing.

Very few games attempt to be this ambitious, yet have this amount of polish to them. For all that Vidar is in Early Access, right now it is a game that has a ton of content and can be played through with more content to come throughout the year. Vidar treats its characters like people and has them reacting to the things that occur around them in a story that is far more about individuals and their tales then of the arcing plot of the Beast that provides the driving motivation.

Apparently this game is too buggy to play at the moment. I've had it crash out on me 3-4 times in the space of a couple of hours. When the game only saves at the end of each game day, that means you have to re-do the entire day.